The Funniness of Garlic

I first became garlic scape aware via a farmer’s market experience way back. After a couple of years, I finally bought a wrangle of them when I saw a simple Boston Globe recipe for a pesto (blitzed scapes with olive oil…maybe add salt).

They are onion-y and garlic-y in a perfectly mild but assertive way. You can only get them in June-ish, when growers cut them down so that energy is focused on getting the almighty-bulb as big as possible.

I didn’t become gooey-eyed until I experienced garlic scapes ‘in the wild’ — in a friend’s tiny and mighty garden on Peaks Island. Their other-worldly and twirly way is hard to miss.

These are from the first garlic that I planted a few years back, to see what would happen. All I can say is: smitten again in a city, neighborhood garden.

The soil was dense and not prepped in any way. My actual garlic head ‘harvest’ was hilariously small:

Behold a Garlic Scape Bouquet (from my first growing foray several years ago)! The seed heads dry and get bumpy, the papery part falls off, and tiny baby garlic seeds are revealed. Around Thanksgiving, it’s easier just to plant a whole, mature garlic clove directly into the ground than to use the miniscule seeds.

2023 Garlic Scape Bouquet!

Do you see what I mean??!

Alluring, each with its own personality…and the shadow one or a group can cast! Be still my heart.

All of this as a garlic head grows.

I have hopes that this year’s ‘harvest’ will offer larger bulbs. But if they pull-up tiny, then so be it. The scape phase is all I need.

It may feel barbaric in the face of all this waxing about garlic’s unexpected delight, but I’ll try grilling them this year.

Photo Credit, Alisa Wolf